UPDATE: [Film] REMINDER: Spike Frames: The Cinema of Spike Lee Conference, New York City (2/1/2009; 11/12-15/2009)

full name / name of organization:

Keith Corson

contact email:

kmc403@nyu.edu

Spike Frames: The Cinema of Spike Lee

In 1993, the Departments of Cinema Studies, Film and Television, andAfricana Studies collaborated in staging a major international conferencefocused on Pan-African Cinema, which uniquely showcased the contributionsof film critics, academics, and industry professionals and explored theachievements of black cinema in a global context. Building on the successof that conference and the insights and debates it inspired, we propose amajor international conference to critically survey and celebrate thework of preeminent film-maker Spike Lee. The objective of this conferencewill be to revisit and discuss anew the remarkable achievements of Lee,as producer, director, film-maker, actor, and teacher in the context ofthe history of American cinema and, more specifically, within thedevelopmental trajectory of â€˜Black American Cinema,â€™ and its complex,tangled histories and debates. The conference title â€œSpike Framesâ€ waschosen to suggest the diverse ways in which the outstanding quantity andflow of Leeâ€™s films have â€˜framedâ€™ or influenced American film-making fromthe mid-â€˜80s into the 21st century. We will also interrogate the waysthe â€˜Spike Lee phenomenonâ€™ has often directly challenged the expectationsand exclusionary practices of the dominant commercial film industry. Aswell, we will look at the ways Leeâ€™s work has played with the seeminglycontradictory â€˜double bind,â€™ of what it means, exactly, to bean â€˜independentâ€™ film-maker while being a successfulcommercial â€˜mainstreamâ€™ director. Moreover, it is our aim that theconference contribute to the research, debate, and scholarship on blackAmerican cinema, while also considering it in the broader context ofglobal filmmaking the 21st century. It is our goal that this conferencewill create support for the archiving and preservation of AfricanAmerican film through the Tisch School of the Arts Moving Image Archivingand Preservation Program, with every expectation that this willsignificantly contribute to building strong institutional structures forthe study of black film-making, its debates, issues and images.

Spike Frames: The Cinema of Spike Lee is scheduled for November 12â€“15,2009. The conference will consist of a series of screenings of key SpikeLee films, plenaries featuring Leeâ€™s collaborators and leadingscholars/critics, and panels focusing on various themes. Panels will becomprised of a chair/moderator and three-to-four speakers, presentingpapers of 30-minutes each.

The program committee invites proposals for 30-minute papers focusing onone of the following themes:

Spike Lee and American film (industry; aesthetics; politics);Spike Lee and International Cinema (influenced by; influences on);Spike Lee and film aesthetics (cinematography; montage; sound;narration);Spike Lee and genre (revision; hybridity; polyphony);Spike Lee and authorship (as a director; as a producer; as an advertisingexecutive);Spike Lee and marketing (of himself; of others {through bio-pics andpublic endorsements]; of products {Nike, Pepsi, etc.});Spike Lee and the city (Brooklyn, New York, Birmingham, New Orleans);Spike Lee and music (as soundtrack; as narrative inspiration; asmetatext; music video);Spike Lee and performance (performativity; stardom; ensemble andimprovisation);Spike Lee and documentary (documentary use of fiction conventions;fictional use of documentary conventions; performance films);Spike Lee and the politics of culture (class, gender, religion, nation,race);Spike Lee and new technologies (film vs. digital video; webstreaming;social networking);Spike Lee and African American film (legacy of early filmmakers, such asOscar Micheaux; legacy on contemporary filmmakers, such as John Singletonor Kasi Lemmons).